Screen and camera
Record your screen and your camera at once
Both at the same time, as separate tracks — so where the camera sits, what shape it is and whether it is there at all are decided afterwards.
Apple Silicon · macOS 14+ · one email when the first build is ready
macOS will record your screen, and it will record your camera. It will not put both in one frame. The built-in answer is to record twice and composite them yourself, which is why this is one of the most asked questions about screen recording on a Mac.
Four tracks and a manifest
Prequel captures the screen, the webcam, the microphone and the system audio at the same time, and writes each one as its own file alongside a manifest describing how they line up.
That sounds like an implementation detail. It is the reason everything below is possible: because the camera is never burned into the screen recording, nothing about it has to be decided before you press record.
Decide the camera afterwards
When the editor opens, the webcam's shape — circle, squircle, rounded or wide — its size, which corner it sits in and whether it is mirrored are all still open. So is whether it appears at all. A take recorded with the camera running can ship without it.
It can also come and go. Layout is allowed to change across a take, so the camera can open the video, disappear while you demonstrate something that needs the whole frame, and return for the last twenty seconds.
If the camera opened a few hundred milliseconds after the screen did — it usually does — that offset lives in the manifest and is handled for you.
And the audio
Microphone and system audio are separate tracks with separate gains, so a notification arriving over your voice is a slider rather than a re-record.
Everything runs on your Mac: capture, compositing in Metal, and hardware H.264 or HEVC export at up to 4K. You will need the Screen Recording permission, and Accessibility if you want zooms driven by typing as well as clicking.
Automatic
It arrives already directed
A raw screen recording is flat — one distance from the viewer for the whole take, with the thing that matters too small to see. Prequel watches where you click and type while it records, and opens the editor with that pass already made.
- Zooms placedOn every click and every burst of typing
- Camera framedShaped, sized and set in a corner
- Background appliedPadding, radius, border and shadow
- Audio balancedMicrophone and system on separate gains
- Cursor cleaned upSmoothed, resized, hidden when it idles
The editor
Everything you would have done in post
It opens by itself when you stop recording, on the take you just made. Nothing to import, nothing to line up.
Zooms that follow the work
Push in on the cursor, a region or whatever you are typing into. Level, speed, tilt and yaw, with progressive blur falling away from the focus.
A camera you frame afterwards
Circle, squircle, rounded or wide, in any corner and any size. The webcam is never burned into the recording, so none of it is decided while you record.
Backgrounds worth shipping
Your own wallpaper by default, seven bundled presets, gradients and solids. Padding, radius, border and shadow on top.
Cuts on a real timeline
Trim the dead air, slice by slice, with a waveform under every clip and a playhead that scrubs. Layout, background and audio can all change mid-take.
A cursor that behaves
Four pointer styles, resized to survive a zoom, and gone from the frame after a few seconds of stillness rather than parked over your work.
What you see is what exports
The preview and the exporter draw the same plan, so the file is the frame you approved — not a close approximation of it.
Quality
Exports that hold up
A video that looks produced is worth nothing if the file is soft. Capture and export run on your Mac's own media engine — hardware H.264 or HEVC, composited in Metal — so 1080p60 records without dropping frames and 4K is a setting rather than a compromise.
- Resolution
- Up to 4K
- Frame rate
- Up to 120 fps
- Codecs
- H.264 · HEVC
- Encoding
- Hardware, VideoToolbox
- Compositing
- Metal
- Output
- Constant frame rate MP4
Formats
One MP4, shaped for wherever it is going
Switch a recording from landscape to vertical and the look holds — the framing is stored in proportions, not pixels, so nothing slides off the frame on the way.
- Landscape 16:9
- 4K
- Vertical 9:16
- Square 1:1
- Portrait 4:5
- YouTube
- Shorts
- TikTok
- Reels
- X
Be there for the first build
Prequel is in development. Leave an address and we will send it the day it is worth installing.
Curious about the internals? Read the blog
FAQ
Zooms, exports and the rest
Can QuickTime do this?
Not in one pass. QuickTime records a screen or a camera, and putting them in one frame means recording twice and compositing them yourself. Prequel captures both at once and keeps them apart until you export.
Can I move the webcam after recording?
Yes, because it was never drawn into the screen footage in the first place. The two are separate files on disk until the moment you export, which is why the corner it sits in, how large it is, which shape it takes and whether it is flipped are all still open questions when the editor opens.
Can I have the camera on screen for only part of it?
Yes. Layout can change mid-take, so the camera can open the video, disappear while you demonstrate something, and come back for the last twenty seconds.
What shapes can the webcam be?
Circle, squircle, rounded rectangle or wide. The squircle is the superellipse macOS itself draws, which is why a camera bubble in that shape sits on a Mac screenshot without looking borrowed from somewhere else.
Which cameras work?
The built-in camera, anything plugged in, and an iPhone through Continuity Camera or Desk View. Which one to use is picked before you record, and the choice is remembered by name rather than by identifier — so it survives a restart and a reconnected cable.
Does recording both at once slow my Mac down?
Capture runs on your Mac's own media engine through ScreenCaptureKit and AVFoundation, with the encode in hardware rather than on the CPU. Recording the screen and the camera together is what the pipeline is built for, not two recordings fighting each other.
What do I need to record screen and webcam together?
An Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 14 or later, the Screen Recording permission, and the Camera permission the first time you record with it. The microphone is asked for separately and only if you want it.